New EQE - Proposal available and consultation will start shortly

A new section is now available on the EQE website preseneting a proposal for the new EQE and announcing that an open consultation will be launched to enable all interested parties to give their feedback on it. As a first step, the concept of the new EQE is presented on the new EQE webpage.

Documentation is presented together with a complete set of mock papers for the various modules in the Wiseflow system (after registration), as well as in pdf. Feedback will be collected by means of a questionnaire for all interested people and parties.

The website provides the following [emphasis added; some small editorial changes made; figures added]:

"New EQE - Proposal and consultation

A proposal for the new EQE is now available and an open consultation will be launched to enable all interested parties to give their feedback on it. As a first step, the concept of the new EQE is presented.

The consultation will be launched in the second half of May and will remain open until 15 July 2022. To be able to access the model papers, please register via the link under "Model papers" below. Feedback will be collected by means of a questionnaire. The answers to the questionnaire will be evaluated by the EPO-epi working group.

Good luck to all EQE 2022 candidates (main exam and Pre-Exam)!

We wish all candidates that will sit one or more EQE papers in the next two weeks good luck / bonne chance / gute Fahrt!

Our EQE blogs will be open for your comments and opinions w.r.t. the A, B, C and D main exam and the Pre-Exam paper immediately after the exams. We will post our (provisional) answers to the various papers in separate blog posts shortly after we have received copies of the exam papers. To facilitate the discussions, we will also post copies of the papers as soon as possible after we received reasonably clean copies. 

Do not post any comments as to the merits of the answers of a certain exam paper/flow on the blogs while an exam/flow is still ongoing. Also, do not post the invigilator password or anything else that may be considered a breach of the exam regulations, instructions to the candidates, code of conducts, etc (see, e.g.,  Online EQE website, myEQE and the emails from the EQE secretariat).

New instructions to candidates for EQE 2022, new myEQE notice, comments on Wiseflow (annotation)

 In the Official Journal published yesterday, two new notices in respect to the EQE were published:

• Instructions to candidates concerning the conduct of the European qualifying examination - OJ 2022, A20 (superseding OJ 2021, A13 per 4/2/2022; which superseded the Instructions in OJ Suppl 2./2019)
   
• Notice from the Examination Secretariat for the European qualifying examination (on MyEQE) - OJ 2022, A21 (superseding OJ 2020, A140)

I also added some observations of unexpected behaviour of the annotation function in Wiseflow at the end of this post.

Note that the Wiseflow Mocks are only available until 6 March 2022 (I assume to prevent any possible confusion between Mocks and real EQE flows)! So if you want to do some further testing in Wiseflow, do not wait until the day before your exam paper!

Calendars for EQE 2022

In the past, calendars were provided to candidates as part of the D and Pre-Exam papers. Those integrated calendars did not necessarily cover all EPO closing days. This meant that some days, on which the EPO filing offices were actually closed (e.g., bridging days), were not always indicated as closing days in the exam calendars. Candidates had to answer the papers solely on the basis of the calendars in the examination papers (see former Notice from the Examination Board dd 18 July 2013).

For EQE 2022, the situation will be different, as candidates and tutors that use Wiseflow for the Mocks currently available may already have spotted. Instead of a calendar, Wiseflow provides a pdf with information about the calendars indicating:

Important notice for candidates: Use of calendars
 
For the EQE 2022 the basis for calculating time limits are the days on which the EPO filing offices are closed as published in the Official Journal. Candidates are encouraged to have the closing days of 2020, 2021 and 2022 at hand during the examination. No calendars will be provided with the examination papers.

The Examination Board also published a Notice to this effect - see Notice dated 19 November 2021. The Notice provides (emphasis added):

Calendars are a necessary tool for calculating time limits, in particular where Rule 134(1) EPC, first sentence, applies. According to this provision, time limits expiring on a day on which at least one EPO filing office is not open for receipt of documents (closing day) are extended until the first day thereafter on which all the filing offices are open for receipt of documents and on which ordinary mail is delivered.

As of the 2022 examination, the practice concerning calendars will change: calendars will no longer be provided to candidates as part of the examination papers for the pre-examination and Paper D.

A notice listing the dates on which the EPO filing offices are closed is published each year in the Official Journal. For the purposes of applying Rule 134(1), first sentence, EPC and Rule 80.5 PCT, candidates should refer to the relevant notice on EPO closing days. They will be able to access the EPO website for this during the exam.

Candidates are allowed to use their own calendar to identify dates falling on a Saturday or Sunday. 

This notice supersedes the notice from the Examination Board dated 18 July 2013 concerning the use of calendars.

 

Detailed time schedule EQE 2022 available (Pre, C and D split into parts) & Info on Mock exams available (updated 13 January 2022)

Late June 2022, a document titled "Information on the schedule for the EQE 2022 examination papers- decision of the Supervisory Board dated 25 June 2021" was been published in the EQE website. Note that the document says that "Candidates are advised that this document may be subject to minor changes as testing continues".

Update: The document has been replaced by a new version dated 2 December 2021:
the D paper section now indicates "No calendars will be provided" - see also our other blog post.

The EQE 2022 will take place online using the same setup as the EQE of 2021. The EQE 2022 is spread over 2 weeks, starting with the D paper on 8 March 2022 and ending with the Pre-Exam on 18 March 2022 (also see here).

As with e-EQE 2021, the pre-examination and both papers C and D will be split into parts. Note that the split of paper D 2022 (26/19/55), and hence the detailed time schedule, differs from that of D 2021 (25/25/50).

Details from the document are given below.

EQE 2021: the statistics are out!

The EQE secretariat has published statistics on EQE 2021:

Pre-Exam: 626 candidates, 87,38% pass, 12.62% fail

Paper A: 1905 candidates, 74,38% pass, 4,41 % compensable fail, 21,21 % fail

Paper B: 2005 candidates, 55,26 % pass, 10,02 % compensable fail, 34,71 % fail

Paper C: 1852 candidates, 47,08 % pass, 9,67 % compensable fail, 43,25 % fail

Paper D: 2003 candidates, 85,87 % pass, 5,89 % compensable fail, 8,24 % fail

A total of 2780 candidates enrolled to one or more main exam papers. 1093 candidates have fulfilled the conditions of Article 14(1) REE, i.e., have passed the EQE and can request to be entered on the list.

The pass rates for paper A and C are within the "normal bandwidth". The pass rates suggest that the marking has been somewhat lenient to "compensate" for the special circumstances of this year's EQE (in particular, cancellation of EQE 202 due to Covid-19; preparation via videoconferencing and self-study due to Covid-19 restrictions throughout the year; first online exam; relatively unknown platform; uncertainty). 

The pass rate for B is very low compared to earlier years; as may have been expected in view of the discussions on the paper, e.g., in the comments on the blogs, e.g. as to the deviating character of the paper (without one clear solution direction) and the unusual aspects despite the "same character as before" indication given in advance. 

The pass rate for D is very high due to the neutralization of D1-1, where all candidates received the full 25 marks of 25 marks, such that only 25 (20) marks had to be scored of the other 75 marks (25 D1 and 50 D2) to obtain a pass (compensable fail). No statistics is available on the effect of the neutralization, e.g., no statistics is available on the results without the neutralization, so that the effect of the 20% extra time and the effect of the D1:D2 ratio being 50:50 rather than the previous 40:60 cannot be estimated.

Unfortunately, no list of individual sores (marks vs EQEregnr) has been published, nor can it be expected that it will be published as our requests thereto have been denied, so that we cannot perform any analysis on the obtained marks, nor can we present the distribution of marks as we used to do on these blogs. 

The published statistics also show pass, compensable fail and fail rates by place of residency and by place of nationality of candidates.

e-EQE 2021 Examiners' Reports available for the main exam papers

The Examiners' Reports are available for Paper A, for Paper B, for Paper C, and for Paper D!

The results (marks for candidates, pass rates and other statistics) are not yet available, neither publicly on the EQE website, nor via myEQE for individual candidates. It seems reasonable to expect that they will become available shortly (as in previous years, the results and the examiner's reports always became available shortly after each other; however, in previous years the results became available before the Examiners' Reports).

Update 21/6/2021: The results letter have been send to the candidates.

"The purpose of the present examiners' report is to enable candidates to prepare for future examinations (cf. Art. 6(6) of the Regulation on the European qualifying examination for professional representatives)."

The Examiner's Reports provide general comments to each of the papers, as well as the Possible Solutions for each and -for A, B and C- an indication of the marking.

The Examiner's Reports do not contain any comments as to the side-effects of the online format, nor whether that has somehow been reflected in the marking, except for the indication in the Examiners' Report of Paper C that: "The examination of 2021 was different from previous years in several aspects, the most important of which is that it was held online and that it was split in two parts. Technical aspects regarding the shift to an online exam are not part of this report".

Update 21/6/2021: The results letter send to candidates provides:

"Due to the technical issues that occurred during the first flow of part one of paper D of the electronic EQE of 2021, the Examination Board has decided to exceptionally neutralize this part of the examination. Therefore, the Examination Board has exceptionally awarded to all candidates full marks (25 marks) for the flow D1-1, which consisted of questions 1, 2 and 6."

The tables with marks attached to the results letters show the marks that were actually scored by the candidate (excluding the neutralization); the score shown in the letter itself includes the effect of the neutralization.  

Please be invited to provide your comments w.r.t. the Examiners’ Reports on our dedicated blogs for the various papers:

• Blog A 2021
• Blog B 2021
• Blog C 2021
• Blog D1-parts of D 2021
• Blog D2-part of D 2021

When commenting, please use your name or a nickname (you can choose to indicate a name at the header of the comment, or just put your (nock)name at the end of your comment), to facilitate a pleasant and efficient discussion.